What happened?
Notorious ransomware gang LockBit claims to have hacked Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC and is demanding a $70 million ransom.
A spokesman for TSMC confirmed a cyber attack to Watson, but put the consequences into perspective (more below).
On their dark web leak site, the Russian-speaking cybercriminals threaten to release stolen data if the company does not respond to the blackmail. August 6, 2023 has been cited as the “deadline” – an unusually long period of time for ransomware cases.
In the post published Thursday evening (June 29), the unknown authors claim in clumsy English that they stole “network access points” and “passwords and logins” from the company.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC for short, is the world’s third largest semiconductor manufacturer (in terms of annual revenue) and the world’s largest independent contract manufacturer. The company supplies some of the major technology companies, especially Apple.
What do we know about the size of the hacker attack?
Relatively little.
No screenshots have been published or files made available on the LockBit dark web website proving the alleged data theft.
A TSMC spokesperson told Watson:
At TSMC, each hardware component undergoes a series of extensive tests and adjustments, including security configurations, before being built into TSMC’s system, the media spokesman emphasized.
The TSMC spokesperson assures:
Following the incident, TSMC “immediately terminated data exchange with the affected vendor in accordance with the company’s security protocols and standard operating procedures.”
Who’s behind this?
A criminal affiliate of LockBit, operating under the name National Hazard Agency.
This goes out a recent tweet from the hacker forum «vx-underground». The forum administrators are considered to be highly networked within the industry. They provide the supposedly largest collection of malware source code.
The leader of the gang is a Ukrainian cybercriminal who operates under the pseudonym «Bassterlord».
Is this the first ransomware attack on TSMC?
No.
In August 2018, TSMC was hit by WannaCry and had to temporarily halt production. The Windows ransomware distributed by Russian-speaking cybercriminals caused tens of billions of dollars in economic damage.
Sources
- wikipedia.org: TSMC
- analyst1.com: Ransomware Diaries: Part 2 – An origin story of a ransomware hacker
More about TSMC
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
